Bernardo Villela is like a mallrat except at the movies. He is a writer, director, editor and film enthusiast who seeks to continue to explore and learn about cinema, chronicle the journey and share his findings.

2010 BAM Award Nominations

As those who are my friends on Facebook, or follow me on Twitter know, in December I am gearing up for my annual film awards (The BAM Awards), and that only partially explains my recent reposting of all past winners.

Since these are picks made by one person, the nominating process is even more important. Aside from the the past years, the full slate of nominees from all years past was not public knowledge.

This is because essentially the first time I did them, in 1996, I created them by myself for myself. At the time, I knew a lot less about how these decisions are made, campaigning, the year-end barrage of contenders and the like, such that the releasing of the Academy Award nominees was even more frustrating. Rather than just bemoan it I decided to create an award slate based on what I had seen.

Back then I was ticket stub pack rat, at the time it was the only way to track anything. So I created the list, picked winners and printed it out. The fact that I stuck with hard copies and no back-up created issues, however, it was just for me at the time.

I called them the BAM Awards because I needed a name. I suppose I came up with Bernardo Academy of Movies because I was being reactionary to The Academy. How one man by himself can be an Academy I didn’t fully consider. I thought it was kind of a silly name even at the time so eventually it just became BAM.

Slowly, the awards widened: soon I emailed a select group of friends (that created eventual storage issues), a few years ago when I was on the Site That Must Not Be Named I decided to really take it public. I didn’t think about it ahead of time, it just occurred to me roundabout late November of ’09 that I could.

The publication was an exciting and unnerving process regardless of how many or how few people would actually care to see them. While there are a two categories (which I now and again consider ending, and have skipped on occasion) which are negative, it is a positive emotion that brings me to these announcements. I want to at the end of this period of time share what I thought an why, and all winner announcements come with some explanation, and I do belabor them and struggle with them.

So it is heartening that last year, for the first time, the actual honorees, be they nominees or winners, on occasion acknowledged it. Now that may seem like a self-aggrandizing statement, but what I liked was knowing the news reached them and other people and they were pleased to hear it. The design of these awards are to cement what performances, works and films most affected me, I make no bones about that, and sharing that felt like a gamble, but it’s been rewarding for that and many other reason.

Of course, if you see a film missing from any year you may inquire, and there is room for intelligent discourse, but the above statements are true: trolling or disrespectful comments aimed at who was chosen won’t be tolerated. Your own awards are just a blog post away.

I apologize for even needing to insert that statement but I did have cause to make similar points last year. Anyway, with how much I enjoyed last year’s and how much I’m looking forward to this year’s awards, I thought it’d be a good idea to put all I have out there in a “reverse” countdown.

So here goes…

2010

Here again I include my original pre-amble with stats later. Also, I will separate nominees and winners here as I began adding explications.

The following are the BAM Award nominations. They reflect only the opinion of this critic and are based solely on the films he was able to see during the course of the past calendar year. Due to the fact that year end releases are difficult, at times impossible, to see before the New Year comes there will be some older titles in the list. For a full explanation of this policy against the tyranny of release dates please click here. A statement about the year in film will follow with the winners of both these and the special awards listed at the bottom along with a little more info. The winners will be published on January 3rd, 2011.

Rainer Bock The White Ribbon
Andrew Garfield The Social Network
Burghart Klaussner The White Ribbon
Will Poulter The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Paul Reubens Life During Wartime

Mark Day Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
Robert Duffy & Chris Labenzon Unstoppable
Rick Shaine The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Minka Willi The White Ribbon
Trevor Waite Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1983

David Arnold The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Dickon Hinchliffe Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1980
Barrington Pheloung Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1983
Kjartan Sveinsson Ondine
Hans Zimmer Inception

“Never Say Never” Justin Bieber (feat. Jaden Smith) from The Karate Kid
“I Remain” Alanis Morissette from Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
”Garbage Truck” Sex Bob-Omb from Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
”There’s a Place For Us” Carrie Underwood from The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader
“Despicable Me” Pharrell Williams from Despicable Me